Setting goals on Facebook is extremely important. As I wrote last night, it’s the root cause of one of the biggest challenges businesses are facing in Facebook marketing: a lack of a proper strategy. If you don’t know where you want to go, you won’t be able to get there very easily.

The worlds of public relations and marketing have gone through two major changes in the last decade. The first one came with the mass adoption of the internet as our primary source of information about businesses. The second came a few of years ago when social media became a mainstream method of letting your friends, family, and often the rest of the world know how you feel about a business. Today, there is no shortage of ways that people can voice their pleasure and displeasure with the various companies with which they do business.

.
Our friends at GetSatisfaction put together this excellent graphic telling six tales of social media turning sour on major companies. There are lessons to be learned from each as businesses turn increasingly to social media to improve their customer relations.

The universal lesson: if you’re going to do it, think it through and consider the consequences before ending up on the wrong side of headlines and infographics.